Prophet Muhammad said, “He is not one of us who proclaims the cause of
tribal partisan-ship…” When asked, what is “tribal partisanship,” he
answered, “[It means] your helping your own people in an unjust cause.”
[1]

“I choose to live in what I think is the
greatest country in the world, which is committing horrendous terrorist acts
and should stop.”

Interviewer to Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright: "We have heard that a half a million children have died [because
of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that's more children than died in
Hiroshima. And – you know, is the price worth it?" Secretary Albright
answered: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the
price is worth it.” [3]

On
March 21, 2003, as I headed home, a day after the United States formally
invaded Iraq, I ran into a colleague from Northeastern University – a
professor of the humanities – at the Ruggles train station in Boston. I was
aware of his political inclinations, and he of mine, from previous
encounters. Still, I thought we were on friendly terms.

“I bet you oppose the war,” he greeted me, as
I approached him.

“Not at all,” I shot back, “ I wish to see
Iraq liberated as much as you.”

Although, it was only the second day of the
war, and the bombs and missiles were accurately on target, it appeared that
the tension leading up to the war had taken their toll on our colleague’s
nerve. He snapped at my banter. Agitated, he began to poke his finger in my
face, while lecturing me about how “thankful” I should be about living in
“the world’s greatest country ever.” Luckily, my train arrived on time – for
which I am thankful – saving me from an unhinged patriot’s harangue.

This was not my first encounter with the
overzealous patriotism that often dominates political discourse in the
United States; and not only among members of the zany right. All too often,
politicians rally their audience with inflated claims of American greatness.
The United States is “the greatest country in the world.” At other times, it
is “the greatest country ever,” “the greatest country ever conceived,” or
“the greatest country in the history of mankind.” When the exuberance soars,
America also “kicks ass!”

Nearly as often, one
hears of the United States as the great Samaritan: second to none at
‘civilizing’ half-breed races. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, the United
States is the “the last best hope of mankind,” no less. More frequently, it
is “the shining beacon on the hill.” Recently, John Kerry, Democratic
Presidential candidate, roused students at UCLA,“I believe we can bring a real
victory in the War on Terror. I believe we must, not only for ourselves but
for all who look to America as the last best hope of earth.” I have to
wonder if the Vietnamese civilians killed by Kerry and his crew also looked
upon them as “the last best hope of earth.” [4]

Judging from results from polls,
quite a few Americans are persuaded by this rhetoric of American greatness
and munificence; though my colleague from Northeastern would go into a fit
over their ‘fewness.’ In 1955, according to a Gallup Survey, 66 percent
Americans polled believed that “The United States is the greatest country in
the world, better than all other countries in every possible way
(emphasis added).” In 1991, mercifully, this percentage had declined to 37
percent; five years later, it held steady at 37 percent. (This looks like
the proportion of steady Republicans in this country.) But there is a fly in
the ointment. In response to a slightly altered question, 55 percent
Americans agree that “the United States is the greatest country in the
world, better than all others.” On the worse reading, then, a clear majority
of Americans still subscribe to the thesis of American uniqueness; though
that majority is down to 55 percent from 66 percent. Shall we take comfort
from this decline in the proportion of hyper-patriots in the US since 1955?
[5]

In the absence of polls on the
issue, I will report results from my own unrepresentative annual surveys on
America’s civilizing mission. For several years, I have passed out a
questionnaire to assess my students’ preparation for my undergraduate
courses in Development Economics and the Global Economy. One perennial
question I ask is about US ‘foreign aid.’ What percentage of its gross
domestic product does the United States annually allocate as foreign aid to
Third World countries? I offer my students five choices: (A) One-tenth of
one percent, (B) One percent, (C) Five percent, (D) Ten percent, and (E)
Twenty-five percent. Incredibly, about half the class chooses C, and most of
the remaining half pick D and E. Two or three ‘unpatriotic’ students in each
class pick A or B. The correct answer is A. Perhaps, my students
think it proper and patriotic to pick a percentage that makes their country
look generous.

In a sense, this talk of national greatness is
unsurprising. It is the staple of a world organized – as it has been these
last few hundred years – into nation states that must compete to survive and
stay ahead of the pack. They compete economically, politically and
militarily. Often, this competition requires sacrifices – of rights, of
leisure, of safety, of lives. The ideological weapon in this competition is
nationalism – creating pride and unity grounded in claims of national
greatness, and matched by an equal contempt for the low or lower standing of
other nations.

Perhaps the United States is distinct because
of the intensity of its nationalist claims. The standard political rhetoric
maintains that the US is the “greatest in the world,” “the greatest ever,”
or “the greatest in the history of mankind.” It stands at the top of the
food chain. Some older nations – that have survived many cycles of history –
might think this strange. Is this upstart trying to compensate for its late
arrival on history’s stage? Arguably, older nations have the self-assurance
of a long and often distinguished history behind them and, therefore, do not
feel compelled to stake out exaggerated claims of national greatness. But
there is more to it.

Nationalism is for the most part a modern
phenomenon, a product of the competition among new nation states
operating in a capitalist world economy. In this competition, success and
nationalist obsessions work in tandem. A nation fired with its own greatness
is more willing to endure greater sacrifices; conversely, it is also more
willing to inflict pain on Others. In the case of the United States, there
was no shortage of successes – economic, technological and military – to
fuel notions of national greatness. As these successes grew, the American
establishment found it convenient to ratchet claims of American greatness.
Most likely, by the turn of the twentieth century, if not before, the United
States was declared to be unique among nations: the greatest country ever,
populated by the noblest breed of humans, the instrument of God, and the
greatest civilizing force on earth. Today, no Congressman can disavow
American uniqueness and survive an election.

I could explore the sinister objectives served
by these visions of American uniqueness – how corporate capital has used it
to rally Americans behind imperialist wars, to incite fears of white America
against Americans of color (and, hence, divide America’s working poor), or
to dupe American workers into surrendering their rights to corporate
capital. Since all this has been done before, I will attempt something a bit
pedantic, but I hope still useful. I will examine whether the United States is indeed “the
greatest country in the world, better than all other countries in every
possible way?” I suspect this is a thankless task, but my work will be
amply rewarded if it deflates even a little some of the illusions of
American grandeur.

By the most widely accepted criterion,
America’s economic lead looks quite secure. Measured in terms of dollars
with comparable purchasing power, the US had a per capita income of $35,080
in 2002, one of the highest in the world. Only two other countries had
higher per capita incomes; Luxembourg at $51,060 and Norway at $37,850. But
these are small countries, with 444,000 and 5 million people respectively;
and the per capita income of the richest 444,000 or 5 million Americans
would easily exceed the per capita income of Luxembourg and Norway
respectively. In other words, Americans can take just pride in their
country’s economic preeminence: the United States is the world’s richest
country.

The United States also commands the world’s
largest economy, though only by a narrow margin. Measured in terms of
dollars with comparable purchasing power, the US gross national income adds
up to $10,110 billion, a little more than a fifth of the global income. The
European Union comes a very close second with a combined gross national
income of $9,520 billion. With its rapidly expanding membership, the
European Union may soon outpace the US as the world’s largest economy. China
places third in the world league of major economies, with a gross national
income of $5,807 billion. At its present stellar growth rate, China could
outstrip both the US and the European Union within two decades if not
sooner. [6]

Surely the US lead in technological capacity
must be larger and more secure. In its 2001 Report, the UNDP published for
the first time a Technology Achievement Index (TAI) “which aims to capture
how well a country is creating and diffusing technology and building a human
skill base – reflecting capacity to participate in the technological
innovations of the network age. This composite index measures achievements,
not potential, efforts or inputs.” According to this measure, the US ranks
second – with a TAI value of 0.733 – finishing behind Finland with a TAI of
0.744. Perhaps this makes Finland a threat to America’s national security;
no country that lags in technology can lead the world for long. Conceivably,
the likes of Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly might urge President Bush do
something about it. After all, Finland is a small country; knocking
down its TAI a few places will be much less of a challenge than occupying
Iraq. [7]

Perhaps the United States might regain the
lead when judged against indicators of technological effort, such as
R&D spending as percentage of a country’s GDP, or R&D personnel per million
in the country. However, this only makes matters worse. On the first
measure, the United States ranks seventh, behind Togo, Sweden, Israel,
Japan, Korea and Switzerland. (Yes, I too am wondering about Togo.) On the
second criterion, the United States improves its rank to fourth place, still
lagging behind Iceland, Japan and Sweden. [8] (Now what
does Iceland do with all those scientists?)

In a last ditch effort, to salvage America’s
position, I decided to extend the technology comparisons to three indicators
of educational performance. But this only produced more disappointments.
Judged in terms of school life expectancy (the number of years a child is
expected to spend in the educational system), the US ranked fifteenth in the
late 1990s. In mathematical literacy for fifteen year olds, it ranked
eighteenth out of 27 countries. It’s performance was only marginally better
in scientific literacy, moving up to the fourteenth place in the same group
of countries.[9]

The United States commands the largest lead
where it matters most – in military power. At $396.1 billion in fiscal year
2003, US military spending exceeds the combined military budget of the next
twenty countries. In 2002, the US outspent the seven “rogue” states (Iran,
Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Cuba) by a factor of
thirty-seven. [10] With Iraq under occupation since April
2003, and Libya air-freighting the components of its would-be WMDs to the
United States, the ratio by which the US outspends the remaining “rogue”
states must have risen still higher. Given these gaps in destructive
capabilities, the United States should feel safer than any empire in recent
memory. So why doesn’t it?

In personal freedom, most Americans
confidently place their country at the top. In a Gallup Poll taken in August
1995, Americans were asked, “how far up or down on a 10-point scale [10
being highest] would you rate each of the following nations in terms of the
individual freedom granted to its citizens?” The US came out first, with 74
percent of the respondents giving it a ‘high’ rating (10-9-8). Canada and
Britain ranked a distant second and third, with only 63 and 46 percent
giving it a ‘high’ rating. [11]

Experts view the freedom rankings a bit
differently. The Freedom House, a conservative organization based in New
York, publishes an annual report, Freedom in the World, that relies
on opinions of experts to rank countries by various indicators of freedom.
According to their index of civil and political liberties compiled for
2000-2001, the United States received the highest score of six (on a scale
of one to seven), but this was an honor that it shared with fourteen other
countries, including Portugal and Uruguay. Britain ranked 34th,
well after Poland and Panama. Israel, the world’s most touted ‘democracy,’
ranked 41st, after Bolivia and Benin. [12]

Is the United States the world leader, then,
in press freedom? That too is misconception. In October 2003, Reporters
Without Borders published its Second World Press Freedom Ranking;
compiled from a questionnaire with “53 criteria for assessing the state of
press freedom in each country.” The United States ranked 32nd,
behind Hungary, Jamaica, Benin and East Timor. To make matters worse,
American-occupied Iraq, only recently ‘liberated’ from the grip of a tyrant,
ranked 135th. There is one consolation: US-occupied Iraq is ahead
of Saudi Arabia, our closest ally in the Islamicate world.
[13]

In many situations, it may be useful to look
upon the rates of incarceration as an important indicator of un-freedom
and racism in a country. For many years, USSR, ‘the Evil Empire,” led the
world in this field with its Siberian gulags. More recently, the United
States has taken the lead with the highest rate of incarceration per capita:
6.41 per thousand in 1999. Russia, the successor to USSR, remains in hot
contest, with an incarceration rate of 6.37 per thousand.
[14] If we add the prisoners the Bush-Ashcroft regime has taken recently
under the Patriot Act inside the United States, those held in Guantanamo
Bay, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those captured at our behest (under
‘extraordinary rendition’) by torture-friendly regimes, our leading position
looks quite secure. The racial composition of those incarcerated tell their
own story. Consider the percentage shares, in the table below, of
African-Americans in the prison and total populations of four US states in
1996. This disproportion is common to many states. [15]

Table One

Share of African Americans in:

States

Prison

population (%)

State

population (%)

Nebraska

31

4

Connecticut

46

9

Wisconsin

49

6

Massachusetts

37

6

In his first inaugural address in 1993, President Clinton spoke of the
United States as the “world’s oldest democracy.” [16] Is
it? Presumably, this history starts the clock of democracy in 1787 when the
Constitution was ratified. But many would consider this problematic, since
this Constitution excluded as much as a sixth of the country’s population –
its slave population – from any of the rights of citizenship. Can we then
start the clock of democracy in 1865 when slavery was abolished, or in 1868
when the Confederate states re-entered the Union with a commitment (in their
state constitutions) to equal rights for all citizens? That too is dubious.

For another hundred years, the United States
was not a democracy for all its citizens. At first through terrorist
methods, and, later, starting in the 1890s, through amendments in the state
constitution, the Southern states pressed ahead in their effort to exclude
blacks from the political process. This resulted in “the disfranchisement of
nearly all black citizens and the removal from office of nearly all black
legislators in the former Confederate states by 1910.” [17]
Arguably, we might start the clock in the 1960s, when the blacks launched
the Civil Rights Movement to regain their political rights. However, this
process is far from complete. Under felony disenfranchisement laws, still on
the books since the days of segregation, some 4.7 million Americans are
denied their voting rights. Under these laws black men are disenfranchised
at seven times the rate for all Americans. [18]

Considering the salience of sports and
athletics in American culture, I would be remiss if I did not document
America’s ranking in this important field. Since few countries in the world
have taken up America’s favorite sports (surely a disappointment for a
hegemonic power), we will have to examine America’s standing at the Summer
Olympic games. At first blush, the US appears to live up to its reputation
at the Sydney Olympics of 2000, leading the world with a points total of
201, well ahead of Russia (180) and China (131). But is the points total
an appropriate criterion? A fair comparison would look at points total per
capita. On a per capita basis, the US position slips to 41st.
[19]

We arrive finally at the
compassion derby. In a recent speech, President Bush declared, “We are a
compassionate country, and we are generous toward our fellow citizens.” It
is a favorite pitch with American politicians in both parties. But this just
won’t wash. In its Human Development Report, 2003, the UNDP measures
a Human Poverty Index (HPI) for seventeen developed countries; it measures
deprivations in four dimensions. On this index of human poverty, the
US ranked dead last out of seventeen countries. [20] If
we measure compassion “toward fellow citizens” in terms of income inequality
– conventionally measured by the Gini index – we get the same result. The US
has the largest value for the Gini index amongst developed countries.
[21] By what available metric is the American political
system “generous” to weaker segments of its own society?

In measuring US compassion
towards other countries, I will take the more lenient view, not
listing the invasions launched, regimes changed, the bombs dropped, coups
instigated or sanctions imposed against the ‘salt of the earth.’
[22] Instead, I will compare the funds allocated to
‘foreign aid,’ the index by which Americans most often measure their
generosity towards poor countries. The total funds allocated by the United
States to ‘foreign aid” amounted to 0.11 percent (note the position of the
decimal) of its gross national income. That is easily the lowest ratio for
the twenty-four members of Development Assistance Committee of the OECD.
[23] On the ground, matters are much worse. Nearly
one-third of this aid goes as grants (no obligation to pay back) to another
developed country, Israel, to buy the most advanced weaponry in the US
arsenal.

So the United States is not
the greatest country in the world, better than all other countries in
every possible way. Why have I labored to establish this rather obvious
result? There is a deep, two-way connection between these claims of
superiority, of uniqueness, and the efforts by the American establishment to
obfuscate the inequities inside the United States and to justify the
inequities it helps to create and sustain outside its borders.

Every time America’s ‘leaders’
speak of the “world’s greatest country,” behind the backs of their
constituents, many, perhaps most of them are scheming to build more prisons
and fewer schools, to hire more policemen and fewer teachers, to train more
secret agents and fewer scientists, to fund more WMDs and fewer life-saving
drugs; they are being wined and dined by Corporations who are monopolizing
the media, denuding our rights, placing their profits before our lives, our
children, our safety, and the natural beauty of the world we live in. In
their myopic pursuit of power, these politicians would rather build the
“world’s greatest country” (if only they could) but populated with an
impoverished, uneducated and unhealthy population, supine and undemanding of
their rights.

Every time America’s ‘leaders’
boast of the “world’s oldest democracy,” and of exporting democracy to the
world, I can see peasants expropriated; workers shot, tortured and jailed;
people’s revolutions overthrown, crushed by American force, guile and lucre
all across the Periphery; all to protect the unrestrained right of American
Corporations to make money. Every time these mandarins proclaim that the
United States is the “last great hope of earth,” people all across the
Periphery take cover, for they know that these words will be followed, as
they have been in the past, by napalm bombs, by landmines, by cruise
missiles, by daisy cutters, by shards of steel planted in their children’s
eyes. The people of the Periphery are all too familiar with the rhetoric of
the “world’s oldest democracy.” They will not be deceived.

So the United States is not
the greatest country in the world, better than all other countries in
every possible way. What if this carefully guarded secret were to spill
out? What if Dan Rather, America’s favorite news anchor, were to open the
CBS Evening News tonight with the announcement that some great think tank in
Washington, preferably a conservative think tank, after years of carefully
investigation, involving the best brains in the social sciences, had
discovered that the United States “isn’t after all the greatest country in
the world, better than all other countries in every possible way?”
Would this be another devastating blow to America’s self-confidence, greater
than that caused by the carnage of 9-11? Would Americans show up for work
the next day or the day after? Why bother if you are not living in the
“world’s greatest country?” How would the President respond to this national
catastrophe? What would he do to restore American confidence in their
greatness? Invade Canada? Colonize Antarctica? Or perhaps, ship the entire
population of the Northeast to Mars?

Most Americans may well be
relieved at this revelation. It was what they had suspected all along, but
could never gather the pluck to tell the corporate lackeys – masquerading as
leaders – who kept telling them otherwise. And now that this ruse had been
exposed, perhaps, Americans will start asking the tough questions, start
reclaiming their lost rights, and start rebuilding a democracy of
all the people, for all the people and by all the people.
Once this questioning starts, perhaps Americans will also start looking into
all the ways in which their country – especially their government and
corporations – impoverish their neighbors around the world, neighbors they,
as Christians, should love, not reduce to poverty, dependency and misery.

When the
United States, an admirable country in many respects, collectively aspires
to inclusiveness, both inside and outside its borders; when the United
States places people – people everywhere – before the profits of its
corporations; when the United States aspires to be the best country –
under a scale of humane values – not merely the greatest; when the people of
the United States want for the world what they want for themselves; then,
and only then, will the world embrace Americans as their own, a good people,
humanly struggling to make our world a better place for everyone.